1885, Mount McGregor
The cottage is quiet in the way sickrooms become quiet, every tread moderated, every door eased shut, every question measured against what it may cost me to answer. Pine air comes through the cracked window and does nothing for the burning in my throat. The pencil is easier than speech now. Speech tears. I keep the pages stacked square to my right and the hot water close because reaching too often has become its own labour. Julia watches without hovering until I stop, then hovers without admitting it. The doctor counts what I swallow. Twain counts pages, which is kinder. Debt has a way of stripping illness of any romance. These lines are not being written for reputation. Reputation already takes care of itself, badly. They are being written because my family must be left with something more reliable than honour and more immediate than memory. The body is failing on schedule; the manuscript cannot afford to do the same, and this morning the hand is already slower than yesterday, and the name on the spine will have to carry whatever the hand cannot finish before the body calls its own halt.
